Concentration Camp or Country Club?

Critics like Illinois senator Dick Durbin tell us the prison at Guantanamo is one step removed from a Nazi death camp. Rush Limbaugh says its more like a country club and calls it Club Gitmo. Who's right? Richard Miniter recently returned from a visit to Guantanamo and files story on his impressions with the New York Post. He writes:

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)

Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.

Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.

And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris said.

Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others. How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of "attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.

That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.

There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for. The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.

One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors wear body armor to treat their patients.

There's much more at the link. Please read the whole thing, especially if you lean toward Senator Durbin's point of view.

Murdering a Saint

The photo below is of Sister Leonella Sgorbati. She was gunned down, along with a bodyguard, outside a Mogadishu hospital where she labored trying to ease the suffering of all who came to her. The gunmen were believed to be members of the Religion of Peace who were offended because the Pope agreed that it's evil and inhuman to try use violence to convert others to one's religion.

Michelle has the details. Hot Air has a video summation of reaction around the Islamic world to the Pope's remarks. Click on the video titled Religion of Peace.

Are the Gospels Trustworthy?

BeliefNet excerpts a portion from a book by prominent New Testament scholar N.T. Wright talking about the historical trustworthiness of the four canonical Gospels. Wright explains why the Gospel of Thomas, pace Dan Brown's claims in the DaVinci Code, fails to be reliable history.

Against those who claim that the Gospels were written long after Jesus' death and are therefore unreliable, Wright points out that:

What is more, those four canonical gospels must all have been written by about AD 90 at the very latest. (I am inclined to think they are probably a lot earlier than that, but they cannot be later.) They are known and referred to by Christian writers in the first half of the second century.... And they incorporate, and are based on, sources both oral and written which go back a lot earlier, sources from the time when not only most of Jesus's followers were still alive and active within the early Christian movement, but when plenty of others--bystanders, opponents, officials--were still around, aware of the new movement as it was growing, and ready to challenge or contradict tales that were gaining currency.

There's more in the excerpt at the link.

The Four Gods

Baylor University has recently released the results of a survey it conducted on religious belief in America. The Baylor Religion Survey is a project focused on improving understanding of American religion and is "the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever amassed". A story about the survey can be read here. The survey itself and its results are here.

The Baylor Religion Survey documents that:

A third of Americans (33.6 percent), roughly 100 million people, are Evangelical Protestants by affiliation.
The majority (62.9 percent) of Americans not affiliated with a religious tradition believe in God or some higher power.
More than a quarter have read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, but likelihood of reading the book decreases with church attendance.

One of the interesting questions the survey asked had to do with the kind of God people believe in. What researchers found was that the type of God people believe in is a better predictor of their political and moral attitudes than is their religious tradition.

Researchers also found that none of the "Four Gods" dominated among believers. The data showed that:

Individuals who believe in an Authoritarian God (Type A, 31.4%) tend to think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs. They tend to believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global events such as economic upturns or tsunamis. They also tend to feel that God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.

Believers in a Benevolent God (Type B, 25%) tend to think that God is very active in our daily lives. These individuals are less likely to believe that God is angry and acts in wrathful ways. Instead, the Benevolent God is mainly a force of positive influence in the world and is less willing to condemn or punish individuals.

Those who believe in a Critical God (Type C, 16%) feel that God really does not interact with the world. Nevertheless, God still observes the world and views the current state of the world unfavorably. These individuals feel that God's displeasure will be felt in another life and that divine justice may not be carried out in this world.

Believers in a Distant God (Type D, 23%) think that God is not active in the world and not especially angry either. These individuals tend towards thinking about God as a cosmic force which set the laws of nature in motion. As such, God does not "do" things in the world and does not hold clear opinions about our activities or world events.

Atheists are certain that no God exists. Nevertheless, they may still hold very strong opinions concerning the morality of human behavior and ideals of social order, but they have no place for the supernatural in their larger worldview.

Other demographic relationships and religious effects surrounding the "Four Gods" include the following:

There is a strong gender effect in belief in God. Women tend towards very engaged images of God (Types A an B) while men tend towards less engaged images (Type D) and are more likely to be atheists.

Region of the country is significantly related to the four types of God. Easterners tend towards belief in a Critical God; Southerners tend towards an Authoritarian God; Midwesterners believe in a Benevolent God; and the West Coast believes in a Distant God.

Individuals with lower educations and lower incomes tend towards more engaged images of God.

Individuals with more engaged images of God (Types A and B) are more likely to attend church weekly and pray several times a day.

God's anger alone does little to inspire religious participation such as prayer and church attendance.

Catholics and Mainline Protestants tend towards belief in a more Distant God. Evangelical Protestants and 53.4 percent of Black Protestants tend towards belief in a more Authoritarian God.

Jews tend towards belief in a Distant God and over 8% of Jews in our sample report being atheists. Over 40% of Americans who are not affiliated with a church, synagogue or mosque are atheists.

Individuals who feel strongly that God is a "he" tend towards belief in an Authoritarian God.

The Four Gods have a significant effect upon abortion attitudes. Approximately 12 percent (12.2%) of the American public believe that abortion is wrong in all circumstances, however those who believe in an Authoritarian God are nearly twice as likely (23.4%) to believe that abortion is always wrong. Those who believe in a Distant God are much less likely to condemn abortion (1.5%).

The Four Gods are also significantly correlated with other issues related to marriage, such as gay marriage, premarital sex, and divorce.

"This is a very powerful tool to understand core differences in the United States," one member of the research team said. "If I know your image of God, I can tell all kinds of things about you. It's a central part of world view and it's linked to how you think about the world in general."

Indeed, the results run to 74 pages and are a rich mine of information that will probably take years to exhaust. Check it out.

Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Hot Air has the latest on the hysterical reaction by members of what Michelle Malkin calls "the religion of perpetual outrage".

Note the drawing of the Pope that's circulating on Muslim websites and read the translations.

If it weren't so pathetic, and dangerous, it would be worth a shake of the head that Muslims in Gaza and elsewhere are venting their anger by throwing firebombs at Greek Orthodox churches. The Greek Orthodox, of course, have nothing to do with the Pope. Maybe it's just that Orthodox and Catholics are both Christian, and that's all that matters to the adherents of the religion of peace.

We wait for wiser and cooler heads in the world's Muslim communities to call for an end to what really is another embarrassment for Muslims everywhere.

Protesting the Pope

Muslims around the world are outraged that in his meeting with "representatives of science" at the University of Regensburg the Pope said this:

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". (Emphasis mine)

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.

Muslims are incensed that the Pope would dare to quote a 14th century emperor who suggests that some of the teachings of the prophet were "evil and inhuman". The proper response, of course, if one finds the Pope's words offensive, is to show that the words he quotes are false, but it's not obvious that this is the tack very many Muslims have chosen to follow. Instead, they seem to be intent on confirming by their actions exactly that in the Pope's message to which they most deeply object.

The fact is that conversion by compulsion and threats is indeed evil. The use of violence to spread one's religion is indeed inhuman. If this misrepresents Islam then Muslims should point out the error. Instead they engage in the sort of protest that gives people of common sense every reason to believe that threats and violence are exactly what Islam is all about.

Muslim students burn an effigy of the Pope in India.

Michelle has more.

Father/Daughter Talk

A friend digs out this venerable tale from his file and passes it along. It makes a nice companion to the piece we posted yesterday titled Does Poverty Make America Immoral?:

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth and heavily taxing the "haves" to give to the "have nots".

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a fairly conservative Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in at school, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

Her father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party, honey."

Moral Inferiority

Dennis Prager writes consistently interesting columns. His latest makes the argument that Islamic morality is inferior to that of the West. He states that:

[E]very country that calls itself "Islamic" is morally inferior to just about every country in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, almost every Asian country and many African countries.

At first this may cause an eyebrow to lift given the Western world's obscene greed, lasciviousness, and violence, and the Muslim's contrary emphasis on personal purity, but read his argument at the link and see if you don't agree that he makes a strong case.

I might want to take his thesis a step further and say that not only is Islamic morality inferior, so is Islamic culture. Since the 13th or 14th century the Muslim world has produced little or no great art, architecture or music, and it's literary efforts have been uneven.

They manufacture little that the world wants and produce only what Western technology and expertise is able to extract from the ground beneath them.

Their scientists have made no contributions to human well-being or knowledge since the middle ages.

Indeed, their single genius seems to be in producing as leaders religious extremists skilled in thinking up ways to torture and kill both infidels and their fellow Muslims. Too much of Muslim culture seems based upon punishment, retribution and revenge. Until they can break out of this mind-set they will probably float through history, drifting from one war to another, while the rest of the world increases the cultural distance between it and them - that is, unless the Islamist extremists get their hands on the ultimate infidel-killer, nuclear weapons. If they do, then we'll all be thrown back into the 7th century. The difference will be that the remnants of Western civilization will start over and try to regain some of what has been lost. The Islamists will be content to stay where they are, killing each other.

It's tragic that what the Muslim world needs most they also seem most resistant to - the Gospel of forgiveness, grace, freedom, redemption, and love.

Iranian Justice

What was the crime these two Iranian boys committed that warrants being hung until dead? They were discovered to be gay. Whatever one thinks about the morality of homosexuality, to execute young men for it is barbaric.

I don't know how many gays there are in the United States but every single one of them should realize that this will likely be their fate if the Islamists prevail in their global jihad and the liklihood of that will increase exponentially if Iran is allowed to build the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons.

For another example of the Iranian interpretation of Islamic "justice" go here.

Does Poverty Make America Immoral?

David Batstone of Sojourners, in an article that is e-mailed by subscription and thus unlinkable, criticizes the Bush administration for aiding the wealthy while the poor languish:

The editors of The New York Times sounded that alarm this past week in an editorial: "Despite the Bush-era expansion, the number of Americans living in poverty in 2005 - 37 million - was the same as in 2004. This is the first time the number has not risen since 2000. But the share of the population now in poverty - 12.6 percent - is still higher than at the trough of the last recession, when it was 11.7 percent. And among the poor, 43 percent were living below half the poverty line in 2005 - $7,800 for a family of three. That is the highest percentage of people in 'deep poverty' since the government started keeping track of those numbers in 1975."

Standing alone, these backward slides are disturbing. Put into the context of our current political realities they are downright immoral.

I'm not sure what he means by "current political realities", but before I can agree with him that the numbers he cites reflect some moral flaw in our society I have to ask a couple of questions.

For example, in order for these statistics to reflect a moral fault in our body politic the people who are mired in poverty must be able to work and willing to work, but prevented from working against their will by some sort of institutional or social hindrance. Mr. Batstone evidently believes that there is such an impediment standing in the way of people who would otherwise make their way out of poverty, but he doesn't tell us what it might be.

What might the hindrance be? One possibility is that there just aren't any jobs, but this seems unlikely given that the economy is at almost full employment and that illegal immigrants are streaming across our borders, presumably because they know there's work to be found here.

Another reason why the people in Mr. Batstone's statistics might be victims of an immoral society is that they are largely minorities and perhaps they are being discriminated against on the basis of their race. However, if Mr. Batstone has evidence that racial prejudice lies behind the poverty numbers, he should adduce it, but he doesn't.

A third possibility is that these individuals are trapped in poverty because the government cut back on welfare in the 1990s, and these individuals, who would work if they could, for sundry reasons not their fault cannot work. Thus they're living in poverty without sufficient government assistance. If this is what justifies Mr. Batstone's charge of immorality then he needs to show us the data that support the allegation, but again, he doesn't. He simply points out that there are more poor now than previously, declares that to be an immoral state of affairs, and lets it go. This is just too facile.

What he doesn't seem to consider is that perhaps a lot of the people in poverty today are poor because of choices they themselves have made. Many people are not just unemployed but unemployable, and many of the latter are unemployable as a consequence of their own choices in life. Some people, for example, have chosen not to take advantage of a free public education and are thus unsuited for good jobs. A high school dropout will earn annually only 65% of what a high school graduate will earn. Other people have chosen to have children out of wedlock and are unable, as a consequence, to work enough to get ahead. Some people have chosen to abuse drugs and alcohol and/or to indulge in other dysgenic activities which make them a liability in the workplace. Some people have chosen not to develop good work habits and thus have trouble keeping a job, much less build a career.

How many of the individuals in Mr. Batstone's 12.6% fall into one of these categories? What responsibility, if any, does government have to these people? Again, we're left in the dark. Mr. Batstone gives us no reason to accept his claim that somehow the poverty situation in the U.S. is "immoral". If he can provide us with some reason to think that these people are poor because of the deliberate actions of others who know that their acts will prevent people who want to earn their way out of poverty from doing so, then he'll have a case worth heeding.

Until then there's little reason to consider his vague and unsubstantiated allegation of immorality as anything other than rhetoric.

Falling Gas Prices

I note that gasoline in my part of the country is now under $2.40 a gallon. As the price of a gallon has dropped almost 60 cents everyone is breathing a sigh of relief except opponents of the president and those who have to run against incumbents in congress.

For these people, particularly Democrats, falling gas prices are terrible news. Never mind that cheaper gas means a heavy burden is lifted from the backs of the poor, the fact is that the Democrats don't want the price of gas to come down for two reasons:

First, many of them believe that keeping the price high cuts consumption which in turn has several salutary effects. The less gasoline that's burned the less greenhouse emissions we dump into the air, the more we conserve a precious resource, and the less wealth that flows to the Middle East and thence into the pockets of terrorists.

Second, cheaper gas redounds to Mr. Bush's political benefit, and that is a painful blow to Democrats. Already his approval numbers appear to be responding to the drop in the cost of a tank of petrol.

Rasmussen has the President's approval rating, as it stood prior to his Monday night speech and the 9/11 observances, up to 47% which is not only a good trend for the President but also good for Republicans running for congress this year.

Astonishingly, from a liberal point of view, falling gas prices are good for both Republicans and the poor. Now that seems an unlikely juxtaposition, one that would doubtless cause many Democrats some cognitive dissonance. It'd be fun to listen to Democrats explain to advocates for the poor why higher fuel prices are more important than the economic well-being of those who can't afford to buy heating oil and gasoline.

Proof: Men Are Smarter!

John Rushton is either very brave or very foolish. He has published a study which finds that men, on average, are smarter than women. This is one of those things that men have tacitly believed for, well, forever, but gallantry forbade them from voicing. Gallantry and an instinct for self-preservation.

Now Mr. Rushton, following the lead of academic kamikazis like Charles Murray and Lawrence Summers, rushes in where angels fear to tread.

Prof. Rushton also claims that just as women prefer men as mates who are taller than they, they also prefer men who are smarter than they. If so, many of them are no doubt disappointed.

In any event, the news report on this study is interesting. You can read it here. Feel free to pass it along to the special woman in your life.

Steele v. Cardin

Having defeated Kweisi Mfume in Maryland's Democratic senatorial primary race Representative Ben Cardin will now run against Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Paul Sarbanes.

There are some interesting dynamics at play here. Polls show Cardin leading Steele 49.4% to 40.2%, but Steele's holding a couple of political aces. Steele is a black Republican and Cardin is a white Democrat. It's unclear how enthusiastically the traditional African-American base will greet a Cardin candidacy. Black Democrats may not vote for Steele, but many of them may not wish to vote against him, either, especially if doing so means voting for a white candidate. Moreover, a statewide survey of black voters commissioned by the Maryland Democratic Party showed that 44 percent were open to a Steele candidacy.

In other words, a lot of black voters may either vote for Steele or simply decide to sit out the election. Either result would be very bad news for Cardin who probably has no chance to win without a strong African American turnout on his behalf.

Add to this the fact that Steele has about double the cash on hand that Cardin does and it looks as though Steele has a pretty good shot at winning the seat.

The Pope Slams Naturalism

The headline of this article declares that "The Pope Slams Evolution", but this is not quite accurate. What the Pope seems to be slamming is the idea that the universe and life can be explained in purely naturalistic terms without any reference to God. The headline might more accurately have read, "The Pope Slams Darwinism" because Darwinism holds evolution to be a purely mechanistic process with no explanatory need for any intelligent input from any non-physical source.

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable".

Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable".

The homily appeared to throw the Catholic Church's full weight behind the theory of intelligent design (ID) - a subject of massive controversy in the United States. The Catholic Church has for over 50 years accepted Darwin's theory of random selection as the most probable cause of development, but has alway stressed God's role.

Recently, however, top theologians have clashed with Catholic scientists over so-called 'evolutionism' - that is, attempts to make evolution explain everything. Vatican theologian Christoph Schoenborn made headlines with a New York Times article a year ago which endorsed the ID theory that has roiled US academic debate and appeared to back full-fledged Creationism, the core Bible story....

Schoenborn [clarified] his position, saying that evolution as a body of scientific fact was compatible with Catholicism, but that evolution as an ideological dogma that denied design and purpose in Nature was not.

[The Pope] told his young audience in St Peter's that "science supports a reliable, intelligent structure of matter, the design of Creation".

"Accounts about Man don't add up without God, just as accounts about the world, the vast universe, do not add up without Him".

Evolutionary theories, he said, posit that "the Irrational, without reason, strangely produces a cosmos controlled by mathematical rules, and even man and his (powers of) reason".

There's more to the article, including, unfortunately, some irritating misunderstandings about the theory of intelligent design. For instance, in one of the above paragraphs the writer says that:

Vatican theologian Christoph Schoenborn made headlines with a New York Times article a year ago which endorsed the ID theory that has roiled US academic debate and appeared to back full-fledged Creationism, the core Bible story.

This is misleading. It gives the impression that Intelligent Design is Creationism, but this is simply not correct. Creationism is a theory of origins based on the Genesis account in the Bible. ID is a theory based upon the empirical evidence for design that we see in biology and cosmology. Creationism uses the raw material of science to make a number of theological claims, and it rests on theological assumptions about the existence of God and the literal truth of Genesis. ID, as a theory, makes no theological claims and rests on no theological assumptions.

The article also errs at the end where it states that:

Supporters of ID hold that some features of the universe and living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence.

This is not exactly true. No IDer thinks that complexity alone implies a creative intelligence. What they do assert is that there is both irreducible complexity and specified complexity (information) in the biosphere and that it is these kinds of complexity which point to an intelligent provenience. Not all examples of complex systems display the properties of irreducibility and specificity, but those which do, if in fact they do, cannot be explained in terms of any purely physical, non-sentient mechanisms that we know of. In other words, complexity that is irreducible and/or specified (i.e. it constitutes information - like DNA does) strongly suggests an intelligent origin and cause.

The big question that both critics and advocates of ID are wrestling with is whether there really are unquestionable, indubitable instances of irreducible complexity in the world and whether it's true that those obvious examples of specified complexity, like the genetic code, really cannot be plausibly be explained apart from intelligence.

Syrian Machinations

Yes, I know. The Syrians did a great job of protecting our embassy in Damascus. Thanks. But, at the risk of being hyper-cynical, I can't help being skeptical. This seems, after all, like a rather amateurish attack. The "terrorists" never set off the big bomb in the van, they fought ineffectively, and in short, the operation wasn't well-coordinated and didn't seem to have much of a point.

So I have to ask, why did these thugs waste their lives on what appears to have been a futile mission? Maybe they were led to believe that circumstances on the embassy's perimeter would be different from what they were. Maybe, in other words, the Syrian security forces actually put the attackers up to the deed, and then allowed them to be cut to ribbons by the guards at the embassy who appear to have been prepared for the assault.

Why would Assad have orchestrated such treachery and intrigue? Because by appearing to defend the Americans in the embassy the United States becomes indebted to him. He's seen as someone who, despite his flaws, really means well. This makes it considerably more difficult for us to pull the trigger on Syria if it should ever become necessary to do so. Condemning or imposing sanctions against Syria for their sundry crimes and misdeeds after they have fought so nobly in our defense would look like a terrible betrayal of their "friendship".

The attack in Damascus may have been a genuine attempt hatched by inept terrorists to kill Americans, or it may have been a clever attempt by a Machiavellian regime to buy American good will in order to immunize it against sanctions - or worse. Perhaps we'll see soon enough.

The Global War Against Non-Muslims

The bacillus of world-wide jihad against the infidel is not confined to attacks against the West. It has afflicted Africa, India and is raging also in Asia. This is from a report on the situation in Thailand:

September 8, 2006: The 32 months of violence in the Moslem south [southern Thailand] have so far caused nearly 4,300 casualties (40 percent of them fatal). During that period, there were some 5,500 incidents of Islamic terrorist violence. That's an average of 5-6 a day, among a population of 2.4 million (some 80 percent Moslem). The violence was largely directed at the 400,000 or so non-Moslems. The terrorist attacks have had the effect of doubling the normal murder rate in the south. A religiously inspired crime wave, so to speak. But the terror is very real as well, especially for non-Moslems. Since most of the deaths are among the non-Moslem minority, the death rate for that community has risen to about 15 per 100,000 per year. The rate in the U.S. is about 6 per 100,000 people per year.

While the number of bombings has increased this year, the casualty rate has gone down. This is largely because of the thousands of additional soldiers and police sent to the south. These security forces are everywhere down there. But the damage has already been done, and thousands of non-Moslem Thais have fled the south. The main objective of the Islamic terrorists is to expel all non-Moslems from the south, and then set up a religious dictatorship.

The Islamist goal, it seems quite clear, is to purge the world of non-Muslims. It has been their goal for 1300 years and will be long past our lifetimes. This is not a challenge that can be met solely by good police work and negotiations. Those who think it is are simply not fully awake to the nature of the struggle in which we find ourselves embroiled. The Islamists aren't the mafia. They're not driven by lust for wealth or territory, per se. They are driven by a fanatical interpretation of the Koran that they believe anoints them to carry out genocide in the name of Allah. All that's keeping them from mass slaughter of infidels is their present lack of a capacity to carry it out.

No Way to Fight a War

This article from the New York Post will pop the blood pressure cuff right off your bicep:

WASHINGTON - Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral - and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone - dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report. U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.

The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground. "We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture," one U.S. Army officer told NBC. But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report.

Pentagon officials declined comment and referred The Post to Central Command officers in Afghanistan, who did not respond to a request for comment or explanation.

Agonizingly, Army officers could do nothing but watch the pictures being fed back from the drone as the Taliban splintered into tiny groups - too small to effectively target with the drone - and headed back to their mountainside hideouts.

Read the rest of the story at the link. Democrats introduced a motion today requesting that President Bush fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for incompetence. In light of this New York Post story even Republican congresspersons are going to find it hard not to vote for it. One wonders how many American kids are going to die because somebody thought it just wasn't proper in the midst of a war to kill terrorists in a cemetery, of all places. If these Taliban cutthroats had all been gathered in a soccer stadium surrounded by live civilians the military would have pulled the trigger and chalked the civilian casualties up to unfortunate collateral damage, but we dare not take them out if they're surrounded by dead people. That would be uncivilized.

Here's a picture of the Post's front page showing a picture taken from the Predator drone of the ranks and files of the Taliban leadership all lined up like ducks in a row. Looks like several hundred of them. Perhaps they're engaged in a prayer of thanksgiving to Allah that the American officer who has to decide whether to unleash a missile on them was busy spinning the propeller on his beanie.

Attriting the Taliban

Strategy Page wonders why the Taliban are employing suicidal tactics in Afghanistan against coalition forces. There doesn't seem to be any good answer to the question:

September 11, 2006: In Afghanistan, government officials, tribal leaders and NATO generals are trying to makes sense of the seemingly suicidal, and pointless, Taliban tactics. For the last six months, the Taliban has been conducting a lot of raids, ambushes, and suicide attacks. This is reasonable for an irregular force. But they've also been carrying out a lot of operations that involve larger forces (e.g., on platoon, company, and occasionally higher scale). Moreover, these troops don't "melt away" as soon as Coalition/Government troops turn on the heat, but fight back. They Taliban tend to lose these stand-up fights, and they don't inflict very many casualties. In fact, the Taliban have been losing 10-20 men for every NATO or Afghan soldiers they kill. Even by Afghan standards, this appears insane. So what are they up to?

It's possible that increased activity has allowed them to reestablish their influence in a lot of areas, particularly along the Pakistani frontier, since they can pitch even their defeats as victories to the largely illiterate tribesmen from whom they recruit.

It's also possible that they're trying to wage a war of attrition. Most analysts, right as well as left, civilian as well as military, believe the Taliban is trying to raise the Coalition casualty count to the point where Europeans, who are so sensitive about their soldiers getting killed, will decide on a withdrawal. But despite some reservations, the current rate of deaths doesn't seem likely to do that.

The Taliban may be hoping that, even though they incur seriously heavy casualties, if they can, in just one battle, inflict really heavy loses on Coalition troops (wipe out a platoon, perhaps), they might be able to trigger the withdrawal of some of the NATO contingents. But doing that might cost the Taliban hundreds of more dead followers.

Piling up the number of casualties may actually serve as a recruiting tool, since it may attract recruits seeking to avenge the deaths of kinsmen (a popular pass-time in the region) as well as many of the most ardent among the faithful who want to seek martyrdom themselves. But how long can they keep this up? Sooner or later the pool of volunteers is going to dry up. American and NATO intelligence officers are readying informer networks that will report on what the "chatter" is, over the Winter, in pro-Taliban areas. Considering the heavy losses the Taliban took this year, are their supporters eager for another round in 2007, or are they dismayed and discouraged? There may be enough chatter to analyze, by the end of the year, to form some conclusions.

It's not mentioned in the article but these suicide assaults are also degrading the Taliban strength in another way by attriting their trained warriors. The new recruits being thrown into the breach are presumably going to be less well trained and less effective. In other words, things are not going well for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Both Barrels

Marty Peretz, publisher of the center left The New Republic, cuts loose with both barrels on the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation and all those lefties who pranced merrily along behind the special prosecutor carrying the kindling with which they fully expected to immolate Dick Cheney and Karl Rove over the Valerie Plame leak.

The last half of Peretz' barrage goes like this:

No one is interested in the case of the "outed spook" and her "outer" any longer. And that is because we now know who exposed the lady to Robert Novak, and he isn't and never was part of the Cheney White House. He was part of the anti-Cheney State Department, liberal heroes, sort of. That man is Richard Armitage, latterly deputy secretary of state and multi-lateralist par excellence. He has now expressed his soulful contrition for the leak. One thing everybody in Washington knows about Armitage is that he doesn't take another kind of a leak without asking Colin Powell first. So there is now added to this weird case the question of what were Armitage's--and Powell's--motives in this exposure. And they should also be asking about Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at State, and his possible role in this affair.

None of these men were especially taken with the Bush administration's war in Iraq. So they are, so to speak, off the hook with the anti-war folk with regard to the leak. The fact is that neither Armitage nor his associates ever told the president who was responsible for the leak. If I were George W. Bush, I'd be ripshit. And, since Armitage two weeks ago unambiguously admitted to being the culprit, should he not now face charges?

Now, there is one person who has been indicted--not for violating the Intelligence Identification Protection Act, the law which Armitage has actually confessed to breaking--but for obstructing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation.... The indicted man is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and he has become MoveOn's designated scapegoat for the entire war. Folk who wouldn't have thought Alger Hiss or the Rosenbergs or Philip Agee guilty of treason have been calling him a traitor. This is laughable.

Let me concede: I am a friend of Scooter Libby. But I do not like his boss. And I do not like his boss's wife. I know this gets me no credit with the all-or-nothing crowd. Still, I like Scooter, who is quite brilliant, very honest, and brave. Also funny. I've contributed to The Libby Legal Defense Fund and have joined the fund's advisory committee, which is not large because in Washington old pals dessert when even their college roommate gets into trouble. In a time when self-styled civil libertarians are giving money to defend Muslim terrorists, I am happy to help defend an American patriot, some of whose politics I do not share and some of whose politics I do, from a cynical onslaught of the special prosecutor who put journalists into jail for not telling him what he already knew.

The campaign of wrath and virtue against Libby was mostly fueled by simulated outrage. Now that everybody knows who committed the offense, such as it was, the charges against Libby should go into the trash.

Peretz is right. The Libby prosecution and the hunt for the "outer" of Valerie Plame is a shameful episode in our contemporary politics perpetrated by the opponents of the current administration. It is, in fact, a case of abuse of power by the special prosecutor and lynch mob mentality on the part of the media. The whole business is a disgrace and those who joined and abetted the mob should be ashamed of themselves.

One Arab's Apology

If more Muslims wrote pieces like this and fewer sounded like apologists for the Islamists, Americans might have a different impression of Islam than many of them do:

September 12, 2006 -- WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.

The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.

Well, I'm sick of saying the truth only in private - that Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.

Yes, our extremists and our culture.

Every single 9/11 hijacker was Arab and a Muslim. The apologists (including President Bush) tried to reassure us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, but was a twisting of a great and noble religion. With all due respect, read the Koran, Mr. President. There's enough there for someone of extreme tendencies to find their way to a global jihad.

Read the whole column at the link. It closes with these words:

Five years after that awful day, it's time for all Arab-Americans, and Arabs around the world, to protest against Islamic fascism, to raise our voices - and, where necessary, our arms - against these tyrants until their plague of terror has been driven from the face of the earth forever.

Note that the writer doesn't shrink from calling the scourge we face "Islamic fascism", a term which triggers in Democrats an anxiety attack when the President uses it, but which is precisely accurate nonetheless.

Put Me in, Coach

Ramirez comments upon the Democrats' readiness to play in the big leagues:

We can imagine the coach (voters) saying, "I'll put you in when we get so far ahead that you can't do too much damage."

Arab Reaction to 9/11

MEMRI has a video compilation of the reactions to 9/11 in the Arab world. It's about 43 minutes long and you may not want to watch all of it, but it's chilling in the hatred it shows among Arabs for the U.S., the virulence of the anti-semitism that exists in the Arab mind, and the incredible gullibility and moral stupidity of even the most well-educated people in the Middle East. Give it a look.

Thanks for the tip to PowerLine.

Fearsome Logic

Those Democrats sure are a caution.

The President's opponents keep asking whether we're safer now than before 9/11, and they insist, in answer to their own question, that we are not. The President's policies, they proclaim, have made us less safe than we should be. President Bush denies this, of course, and in a speech last week firmly asserted that we are indeed safer than we were prior to the attack on the WTT and Pentagon five years ago.

Now the President's answer notwithstanding, I think the question whether we are safer than before 9/11 is foolish because there's no way it can be answered. No one has stated what the criteria are for assessing whether we're safer, and a person would have to be omniscient in order to know whether, in fact, we are in greater or lesser peril than previously. The most we can say is that as long as there are Islamists out there who wish to kill us we are not safe. Nevertheless, the Democrats adamantly insist we're less safe and the President assures us that we're more safe.

But here's the funny part. Assorted Dems and their media mouthpieces - John Kerry, Harry Reid, and Juan Williams among others - all chimed in over the weekend to accuse the Republicans of spreading "Fear" in their attempt to win the upcoming elections. The Republicans are trying to win in November by scaring the bejabbers out of the ignorant masses by talking about the need to remain steadfast in the war on terror.

This was a very odd thing for them to say. The Dems are ululating over how unsafe we are, and grabbing every passersby by the lapels to press upon them the message that terrorists can too easily strike us again, that our ports are insecure, and so on, while the President replies that, on the contrary, we're safer now than we were in the 1990s. Yet it's the Republicans, the Democrats snif, who are campaigning on "Fear".

That's the sort of droll reasoning that the Democrats evidently hope to bring to both houses of Congress after November's election.

Is it not the Democrats who are not only warning us that Bush hasn't made us safe from terrorism, but also insisting that the world is getting warmer, that we can expect more frequent and more violent hurricanes, that the Republicans want to take away old folks' social security, that Republicans, if they have their way, will cause the deaths of thousands of women by forcing them into back alley abortions, and that Republicans are at any moment going to strip blacks of their civil rights?

This is real fear-mongering, but it's not the Republicans who are engaging in it. You'd think the media would be embarrassed to let it pass, but apparently it takes more than tortured logic to embarrass the media.

Re: The Islamic Stereogram

Byron reflects on the previous post and uses it as a springboard for posing some provocative questions on the psychology of extremism. Read his thoughts on The Islamic Stereogram on our Feedback page.

The Islamic Stereogram

A couple of years back people found themselves to be fascinated by stereograms, pictures of repeating patterns of color and shapes in which, if stared at for a few moments, a 3-D figure could be discerned. I thought of stereograms while reading an article in The Washington Times in which Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, expresses puzzlement about the motives of the 9/11 hijackers:

What motivated 19 relatively well-off Arab men, all Muslims, to become such horrific suicide bombers? Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the national September 11 commission, says motivation was the "big question" the panel could not answer.

"We were never able to answer why the 19 were willing to kill themselves. What was the motivation? I am talking in a very personal way," Mr. Hamilton, a Democrat who represented Indiana's 9th District in the House for 34 years, said in an interview with The Washington Times.

"What was the motivation for each one of these hijackers? I think the question of motivation was opaque to us. We just could not nail it. They were dead, of course."

I'm not sure how, after all that the terrorists themselves have said, anyone in the West who hasn't been asleep could say that their motives are "opaque" to us. For the benefit of those who have not been paying attention and for those like Mr. Hamilton who are staring at the stereogram but simply can't pick out the figures, let me suggest one short-term, one mid-term, and one long-term goal of the jihadis:

In the short-term they want the United States out of the Middle East. There are two main reasons for this: One, we are infidels and our very exhalations defile their sacred land. Two, it's difficult for them to achieve political power in those Muslim states which are still governed by less radicalized rulers as long as we're in the way.

In the mid-term they want to destroy Israel. The Israelis are not only infidels who occupy land in the very heart of the future Islamic caliphate, but the success of the Israelis, political, economic, and military, is an indictment of the ineptitude and incompetence of the Arabs and hence of their religion. This incurs Arab hatred of the Israelis far more than does the "Palestinian problem" which most Arabs couldn't really care less about.

Having achieved the first two goals and consolidated their power in the Middle East, their long-term ambition is to spread their religion across the globe. Their dream is that the whole world be Islamic. The world will essentially be given the Centanni option: Those who will convert will be allowed to live, those who won't, won't.

Thus, what motivated the 9/11 hijackers was goal number one which they saw as a necessary step to reaching goal number three. The hijackers were motivated purely by a religious ideology that sees the war against America as the biggest battle in the struggle to impose Islam on the world.

Why do they hate us? They hate us because we're infidels and we're successful. In their minds it is they who hold the truth and yet they've been failures since the 14th century, while the West believes the lies of Satan and has been incredibly successful. This fills them with a burning rage borne of jealousy and humiliation coupled to a profound anguish over the injustice of it all.

But now they believe Allah wants to change that, and they are willing to give their lives in his service and to his cause. Like the Communists who believed that they were on the right side of history, the Islamists believe that they can't fail because they're carrying out the will of Allah.

They themselves have said all this which is why it is surprising that Mr. Hamilton and the members of the 9/11 Commission profess to be unable to discern the pattern in the Islamic stereogram.

William Wilberforce Movie

A movie on the life of William Wilberforce is set to be released early next year:

Like Martin Luther and Nate Saint before him, real-life hero of the Christian faith William Wilberforce will be making his big-screen debut next year, with a new historical drama called Amazing Grace. Directed by Michael Apted, the film will receive a U.S. distribution from Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions.

The Walden Media movie-set to be released on February 23, the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade-stars Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four) as Wilberforce, an outspoken Christian and political activist who played a large role in bringing about the slave trade's end. Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon also star.

The distribution companies plan to market the film to a wide variety of audiences-arthouse crowds, human rights activists, and also religious groups. Roadside's Howard Cohen notes that "Wilberforce is a hero to many Christians because he combined political actions and his belief in God." Cinematical reports that there may be plans in the works for Walden Media to join in the film's marketing campaign.

Wilberforce is a man with whose life too few people are familiar.

He devoted his life to the cause of abolishing Britain's role in the institution of slavery almost from the time he converted to Christianity in 1784 until his death in 1833.

As a member of the British parliament he gave his first speech against slavery in 1789 and continued the fight for abolition throughout his life, often against massive and vicious opposition. In 1807, he achieved his first victory when it was made illegal for a British subject to transport slaves, but slavery itself was still legal throughout the Empire, and British slavers did a brisk, if illegal, business in slave trafficking. Sea captains were fined 100 pounds for every slave found aboard their vessels, so, to avoid the fines, the slave ships' crews, when they saw a naval patrol boat approach, would throw as many slaves overboard as they could. This practice outraged enough people that eventually it was recognized that slavery had to be outlawed altogether.

Wilberforce himself felt that slaves couldn't simply be emancipated only to be left to fend for themselves uneducated and unskilled. Nevertheless, the forces he had set in motion in 1789 eventually proved ineluctable, and one month after his death in 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

William Wilberforce is a genuine hero in the fight for human rights, and he deserves to have a quality film made about his life. I hope the one coming out in February does him justice.

Manly Men and the Vanishing Christian Male

Joe Carter brings his sharp wit to bear on the trend in some circles to portray Jesus as some sort of Hell's Angel with a halo. He writes:

First, my bona fides. I'm a former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I've spent fifteen years in the Corps and fifteen seconds (cumulatively) riding bulls. I've spent my summers in 100 degree weather baling hay, shoeing horses, castrating hogs, and running laps for sadistic football coaches. I've fixed pump jacks in Texas oil fields and made auto parts in a Missouri factory. I've changed engines on F-18s, tires on Humvees, and a carburetor on a '76 Gremlin.

I've hunted snipe and fished for shark. I've eaten rattlesnake, alligator, and the pork pattie from an MRE. I've lived through tornados, typhoons, and a divorce. I own a .40 caliber Glock. My hero is John Wayne.

In other words, there is some evidence that I am-or at least once was-a fairly "manly man." I'm also a devout Bible-believing Christian. But for the life of me, I can't discern how the two are connected, much less why one is necessary for the other. Yet that is the impression I often get when I read about the "feminization of the church" and the move to provide young Christian men with "masculine" role models.

Carter has specifically in mind here a pastor named Mark Driscoll who evidently makes much of the need for a more masculine Christianity. Joe doesn't necessarily disagree with the general idea, but he does wonder, as I do, about the concept of masculinity that is sometimes promoted in the name of a "muscular" Christianity. Contrary to some who think otherwise, I don't believe there's much about a professional wrestler, for instance, or an ultimate fighter (except perhaps their courage) that a young boy should emulate.

Even so, I think it's important that we begin to reemphasize masculinity and masculine virtues, properly understood, because, Joe's concerns about the "move to provide young Christian men with 'masculine' role models" notwithstanding, there is a need for young men to see mature males in positions of leadership in the church. If this does not happen, the church will be increasingly regarded by young men as a women's club, and more of them will think it irrelevant to their lives.

This is already a concern in many churches whose pews and leadership positions are often filled with women. Perhaps the erosion of male interest is partly due to the gospel's emphasis on gentleness, submission and love for a male figure (Christ). I think such an emphasis is psychologically and subliminally difficult for many men, but this is meliorated somewhat when men see other men preaching, teaching and leading in the church. When they don't they tend to lose interest.

Thus there are two trends in today's church that'll eventually prove unhelpful if we wish to increase male interest in church. One is the growing number of gays in the ministry, and the other is the growing number of women in positions of leadership. Leave aside all the arguments pro and con for both of these trends, the fact is that, if they continue, young men will increasingly see the pastorate as a calling for either gays or women, they'll not see it as something that "straight" men do. Forget about whether this is right or wrong. It's simply a fact, I believe, of male psychology.

An anecdote: I used to coach high school football. Back in the 1970s all our managers were young men who were proud to be part of the team and to play a role in the team's success. Then we began accepting girls as managers and within just three years boys simply stopped doing it. The role of manager had come to be seen as one that girls fill, and the guys looked for other outlets for their energies. Today, it's unusual to find a male manager in any sport in any high school anywhere.

A similar evolution will take place, I suspect, in the pulpit of our churches. In those denominations which are ordaining relatively large numbers of women, there will be a corresponding decline in the number of young men who choose to go into the ministry. It's already happening, of course, but it's hard to tell at this point whether the decline in male candidates has led out of necessity to a rise in female clergy or whether the increasing numbers of female pastors has led to the decline in males. Perhaps both phenomena are responsible. The point is, however, that we need to be aware that ordaining women (and I'm not saying that we shouldn't) is going to accelerate the shrinking of the numbers of young men who take an active interest in matters of faith.

This may lead to a vicious cycle where the decrease in the number of committed young men will lead to a decline not only in the number of males entering the ministry but also the number of males in the pews. The same thing will happen, I suspect, in churches in which gays are prominent in positions of leadership.

This is not an argument for refusing ordination to women or to gays (if they're celibate). It is, though, a call to understand that unless we take into account its ramifications on the male psyche we can expect a dwindling number of straight men in the pew as well as in the pulpit and this would be a sign of a church in serious distress.

Re: Young People

A student of mine responds to the post titled Young People and the Church on our Feedback Page.

How the Senate Race is Shaping Up

Real Clear Politics has the polls on thirteen senate races where there is still some doubt about the outcome. Of the thirteen contests the Democratic candidate is ahead in five and very close in a couple of others. Where they are ahead they have a substantial lead. In three of the five races where the Democrat is leading, the Republican is the incumbent. The Republican senators most at risk are Dewine (OH), Santorum (PA), and Burns (MT). One race (MN) in which the Democrat is ahead the contest is for a seat vacated by another Democrat. One Democratic incumbent is trailing (Menendez, NJ), and one Democratic incumbent is leading (Cantwell, WA).

So, the upshot is that it appears that if the election were held today, and if these polls held up, the Republicans would lose a net two seats in the senate. A lot can change between now and November, however, and if the Republicans start campaigning on the issues Newt Gingrich lays out here, especially if they campaign hard on border security, they may be able to cut their net loss of seats to zero. Perhaps they'd even pick up a seat.

Learn a Hundred New Things

Tom Bethell at The American Spectator, a man who knows a few things about the controversy surrounding the theory of naturalistic evolution, reviews the new book by Jonathan Wells, author of the very popular Icons of Evolution. Wells' new title is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Evolution about which Bethell says:

Jonathan Wells' [new book] is surely the best book ever written on the problems of Darwin's theory of evolution. I was about to say the best for laymen, but it will also be invaluable for experts. The evidence and arguments deal with such a broad range of topics that few will be conversant with them all. Wells cites scholarly literature throughout, copiously footnotes his sources, uses plain-language quotations and translates technical terms where necessary. The book is accessible to readers with no prior knowledge of the field.

Open-minded readers will surely conclude that the propaganda campaign on behalf of Darwinism has become so furious precisely because the scientific evidence for it is so weak. Much is at stake-this is no mere storm in an academic teacup. Did we get here as a result of blind chance, as the more candid Darwinists maintain? Or was life on Earth intelligently designed?

Darwinists sometimes define evolution as "change over time" or a "change of gene frequencies." Since life and gene frequencies certainly do change over time, this allows Darwinians to claim that evolution is "a fact." What they really want to insinuate is something more ambitious: The factual basis of the claim that life, in all its complexity, was generated by chance and random mutations. And that has not been established-not even remotely.

Bethell goes on to summarize Wells' arguments that Darwinian evolution, i.e. the emergence of one species from another by purely material processes, suffers from a want of sufficient evidence.

He closes his review with this:

I strongly recommend this book. Even those already conversant with the subject will learn a hundred new things, all tending to persuade us that life is a matter of design, not chance.

I'm on my way now to my favorite bookseller to pick up a copy.

Kooks and Crooks

Where do the Democrats get these people?

"George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."
Claire McCaskill Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri.

"A federal investigation has been launched into the financial dealings of New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and a nonprofit agency he has helped over the years, sources said."

McCaskill has shown herself, with this kind of irresponsible Cynthia McKinneyism, to be an unserious candidate.

Menendez, for his part, is running in a close race with Republican challenger Tom Keane. The last time a N.J. Democrat was in a senate race and looked vulnerable to a Republican challenger the Dem godfathers made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and he dropped out of the race. That was Senator Bob Torricelli in 2002 who was replaced by the popular former Senator Frank Lautenberg a couple of weeks before the election. Lautenberg won the general election and has been a reliable liberal vote in the senate ever since.

No doubt Senator Menendez is in deep doo-doo with the Democratic dons in N.J. If any of them offer to take him out fishing on the lake he'd do well to decline the invitation.

Meanwhile, while we're on the subject of Democratic larcenies, what ever happened to Louisianna Democratic congressman William "Icebox" Jefferson? You'll recall that the honorable Mr. Jefferson was found to have stashed almost $100,000 in bribe money next to the ice cream in his freezer. He should be due for an indictment soon, shouldn't he?

Guilty, Even When Proven Innocent

David Broder at the Washington Post expresses my feelings on the Valerie Plame affair better than I can:

For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition.

Now at least one count in that indictment has been substantially weakened -- the charge that Rove masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by "outing" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame.

I have written almost nothing about the Wilson-Plame case, because it seemed overblown to me from the start. Wilson's claim in a New York Times op-ed about his memo on the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger; the Robert D. Novak column naming Plame as the person who had recommended Wilson to check up on the reported sale; the call for a special prosecutor and the lengthy interrogation that led to the jailing of Judith Miller of the New York Times and the deposition of several other reporters; and, finally, the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- all of this struck me as being a tempest in a teapot.

No one behaved well in the whole mess -- not Wilson, not Libby, not special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and not the reporters involved.

The only time I commented on the case was to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources' names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.

But caution has been notably lacking in some of the press treatment of this subject -- especially when it comes to Karl Rove. And it behooves us in the media to examine that behavior, not just sweep it under the rug.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and now a columnist for several publications, has just published a book titled, "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." It is a collection of his columns for Salon, including one originally published on July 14, 2005, titled "Rove's War."

It was occasioned by the disclosure of a memo from Time magazine's Matt Cooper, saying that Rove had confirmed to him the identity of Valerie Plame. To Blumenthal, that was proof that this "was political payback against Wilson by a White House that wanted to shift the public focus from the Iraq War to Wilson's motives."

Then Blumenthal went off on a rant: "While the White House stonewalls, Rove has license to run his own damage control operation. His surrogates argue that if Rove did anything, it wasn't a crime. . . . Rove is fighting his war as though it will be settled in a court of Washington pundits. Brandishing his formidable political weapons, he seeks to demonstrate his prowess once again. His corps of agents raises a din in which their voices drown out individual dissidents. His frantic massing of forces dominates the capital by winning the communications battle. Indeed, Rove may succeed momentarily in quelling the storm. But the stillness may be illusory. Before the prosecutor, Rove's arsenal is useless."

In fact, the prosecutor concluded that there was no crime; hence, no indictment. And we now know that the original "leak," in casual conversations with reporters Novak and Bob Woodward, came not from the conspiracy theorists' target in the White House but from the deputy secretary of state at the time, Richard Armitage, an esteemed member of the Washington establishment and no pal of Rove or President Bush.

Blumenthal's example is far from unique. Newsweek, in a July 25, 2005, cover story on Rove, after dutifully noting that Rove's lawyer said the prosecutor had told him that Rove was not a target of the investigation, added: "But this isn't just about the Facts, it's about what Rove's foes regard as a higher Truth: That he is a one-man epicenter of a narrative of Evil."

And in the American Prospect's cover story for August 2005, Joe Conason wrote that Rove "is a powerful bully. Fear of retribution has stifled those who might have revealed his secrets. He has enjoyed the impunity of a malefactor who could always claim, however implausibly, deniability -- until now."

These and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.

It's not just publications that owe Rove an apology, but also indioviduals like Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman at MSNBC who had the hapless advisor to the president all but swinging from the gallows in their coverage of this non-event.

The really interesting thing about this editorial is that so many of the administration's critics don't really care about what the actual truth is, what they care about is that the "Rove is guilty" meme has enormous psychic resonance on the left and is therefore their truth. Whether Rove actually did what Joe Wilson mendaciously accused him of is not important to them because surely he did other things just as evil.

And these are the people the public trusts to provide them with the truth.

Liberal Fantasies

Another hate-filled liberal, obsessed with murder, gives voice to her fantasies:

In Cindy Sheehan's new book, Peace Mom ... the antiwar icon admits she has fantasized about going back in time and killing the infant George W. Bush, thereby preventing the Iraq War.

I wonder how many parents fantasized about killing the infant Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, or LBJ, all of whom took us to wars in which hundreds of thousands of young men, each one loved just as much as Ms Sheehan's son, met their deaths. Even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ordered military operations in which Americans were killed. I wonder if the parents of those soldiers wished they could go back in time and murder these men when they were babies. If so, they apparently at least have had the moral modesty to refrain from publishing such obscene dreams in a book.

There's a profound pathology afflicting people who hate so irrationally that they would tell the world that they are capable of killing a baby in order to prevent the child from growing up to be the person they loathe. Sadly, Ms Sheehan's obsession with murdering the president is not confined to her alone. This sickness seems epidemic on the anti-war left.

The Choice They Offer Us

The deal offered Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig while they were imprisoned in Gaza is the deal that Muslims envision for all Westerners: Accept Islam or die.

Adam Gadhan, the American Muslim traitor, offers such an invitation, veiled though it may be, on this video. Parenthetically, it's interesting that Gadhan praises George Galloway, Robert Fiske, and Seymour Hersh and also approves the effort to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Perhaps we can conclude something about the character of all four of these men from the feelings of this terrorist sympathisizer toward them.

The Centanni/Wiig episode illustrates a vast difference between Islam and Christianity. A Christian would never dream of holding a gun to a kidnap victim's head and giving him the choice of accepting Christ or suffering death. Such a choice would be utterly nonsensical and contrary to everything Christ teaches. But Muslims think it makes perfect sense to murder someone who refuses the offer to worship Allah. They are convinced beyond doubt that a gunpoint conversion finds favor with God. That's the good news, such as it is, offered us by the Islamists: If you assent to Islam we won't kill you.

The Christian is commanded to bear the insults of others and to love them despite their contempt for the faith that the Christian cherishes. The Muslim demands that those who insult Islam be butchered:

That, tragically, is our future unless we resolve to win the war against Islamo-fascism.

Newt's Plan For Victory

Newt Gingrich offers an eleven point plan for Republican success in November. Whatever you think about the guy he certainly does generate ideas and think strategically, probably more than anyone else in politics - in either party. His eleven proposals are these:

Republicans should spend the next two months focused on 11 straightforward, morally grounded issues about which the American people have clearly defined beliefs.

Some of these issues will make Republican elitists uncomfortable, but these were the same elitists who were uncomfortable with President Reagan and who scoffed at the Contract with America and rejected its bold proposals.

A Republican majority in the House that spent the next two months on these eleven issues would go a long way toward clarifying the choice between the San Francisco values of Nancy Pelosi and those of a GOP majority. This refreshing approach would reject the "incumbentitis" of relying on pork-barrel spending for reelection and return to the basic populist conservative values which gave us a majority in the first place.

These 11 issues are all clear and all doable.

1. Make English the Official Language of Government.
   
2. Control the Borders.
   
3. Keep God in the Pledge.
   
4. Require a Voter ID Card.
   
5. Repeal the Death Tax, for Good.
   
6. Restore Property Rights.
   
7. Achieve Sustainable Energy Independence.
   
8. Control Spending and Balance the Budget.
   
9. Tie Education Funding to Teacher Accountability.
   
10. Defend America From the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.
    
11. Focus on Iran and North Korea.
    

He explains each of these at the link. It would be fun to watch the Democrats run against anyone who campaigns on these issues. There'd be lots of name-calling, of course, but very little attempt to explain to the voters why any of these proposals would be bad for America.

Leaving the Left

Erstwhile British leftist Stephen Pollard issues his declaration of independence from his former associates. Here's what he calls his Maida Vale Manifesto:

We the undersigned have always thought of ourselves as being on the Left. We have held it as axiomatic that the Left believed in fighting tyranny, liberating the oppressed, and spreading wealth and power.

We have had a rude awakening. When terrorists murdered thousands of American citizens, many of our fellow leftists blamed not the terrorists so much as Americans themselves. They had it coming seemed to be the view of many, if not most, of the Left.

This attitude was typified by the Left's house magazine, the New Statesman, which wrote this in its editorial after 9/11:

"American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants. Well, yes and no. Yes, because such large-scale carnage is beyond justification, since it can never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. No, because Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privilege of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the US often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader."

This piece of moral degeneracy was far from being a one-off. In the aftermath of 9/11, we were shocked by the frequent incidence of similar sentiments. The New Statesman again typified this after last July's tube murders, with a picture of a rucksack on its cover, accompanied by two words in large font: Blair's bombs.

There are many decent people on the Left, who understand the difference between good and evil, and who do not ally themselves with terrorists, murderers and oppressors. The Prime Minister himself is an outstanding example of this, risking his political support within his party to do the right thing at the right time.

But the very fact that supporting the liberation of Iraq from Saddam entailed such a political risk says almost all that needs to be said about the outlook of most Labour Party MPs and members.

Add to this the relish with which large, mainstream sections of the Left - typified by the Mayor of London - now choose to ally themselves with Islamists who seek to destroy the essence of Western civilisation, who would put to death homosexuals and Jews, and who would put women in metaphorical - and sometimes literal - chains, and the moral cancer that has taken hold of the Left becomes clear.

The evidence of reality is something with which we have had to wrestle. It is not easy to acknowledge what the Left has become, and the mindset of Leftists. But that evidence is so overwhelming that we can no longer conceive of describing ourselves as being on the Left in any recognisable form.

Theoretical arguments about what is or is not a proper Left-wing position are now meaningless. The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy.

Pollard's description of the moral and intellectual inanition of the British secular left applies no less aptly to their American counterparts.

American Muslims

Stories like this one about the attitudes of American Muslims toward terrorism are heartening.

Young People and the Church

Commonweal, a Catholic magazine on religion, politics, and culture, has a piece by Dennis Doyle that probably captures the experience of many parents as well as many young people. It starts with this:

Two months after the wedding of my nephew, Joe, and his lovely bride, Laura, I went out to dinner with them. Their wedding had been well planned and beautiful, a ceremony containing so many thoughtful elements, I'd assumed they must be very religious. Later, though, I discovered it was Laura's mother who was behind many of those touches. Being a nosy Catholic theologian, I quizzed the two of them over dinner. It was true, they admitted: they had enjoyed picking the readings for the ceremony, but as for religion itself-well, they saw themselves not as religious, but as spiritual.

Hesitantly, I started to venture a response, then pulled back.

"You're going to use your twenty-four-hour rule!" said Laura with a laugh.

We had just been discussing the topic of e-mails sent in anger and how regrettable they can be, and I'd explained my personal rule: If a message you're about to send feels too heated, wait a day and give yourself a chance to send a more measured one.

"Correct," I laughingly agreed.

Yet all of about twenty-four minutes later, there I was, plunging into the subject, animatedly sharing with them how both spirituality and religion had become very important for me around their age. I was gently attempting to prod them, and Joe felt the implicit critique. "You had your epiphany, and that's great," he said. "We haven't had ours yet."

My nephew was quick to explain that he is a true fan of religion and of sincerely religious people-even envious, sometimes, of those who are able to live out their religion in an intelligent, committed manner. But he considered himself a spectator, not a participant, and moreover saw a basic distinction between spirituality-which he viewed as a felt connection to something deeper-and religion, a human construct rooted in tradition and ideology. He had other objections. In his view, while religion can sometimes provide a structure for spirituality, it can also be divisive and limiting. Further, most people inherit their religion, making it difficult for them to freely choose a faith later.

For her part, Laura emphasized the difficulty of making exclusive commitments in this complex, pluralistic world. Like Joe, she said she wouldn't mind believing in a religion, but it was difficult for her to imagine a particular religion being the "right" one. She saw "spirituality" as a vague concept, something akin to "finding yourself," but also a positive one, suggesting a habit of being in touch with your inner core. For Laura, belonging to a particular religion would involve a type of equivocation, since invariably she would have to accept things she didn't really believe. Should Jesus be thought of as God by Hindus and Muslims as well as by Christians? If she believed that, she mused, she'd have to hope that someday the entire world would be converted to Christianity. Yet she valued religious pluralism, and considered it both healthy and beneficial. She was comfortable with Hindus remaining Hindu and Muslims Muslim. Did this acceptance of other faiths neutralize the Catholic beliefs with which she grew up?

The conversation is familiar to me. The day before I started to write this, one of my sons, a college student, informed me that he was no longer going to Mass. He said he would probably attend later in life, but for the time being, it didn't really make any difference whether he went to church or not. I was fairly calm about it-even appreciative that he saw his disaffection as a stage he was going through. But a colleague I shared the news with barked in anger (no twenty-four-hour-rule there): "Doesn't your son realize that if he goes to church every Sunday over the next twenty-five years, it will make all the difference-and that there's no way for him to know unless he does it?"

I recognize a bit of a Yogi Berraism to this logic, if not a full-scale Catch-22: my son should know something there's no way for him to know unless he does it for twenty-five years. But, paradoxically, that is the truth of it; that is how religious knowledge is acquired. And that's what I really would like to tell Joe and Laura. You won't know whether to believe unless you let yourself try.

Doyle goes on to discuss some of the reasons young people often feel disaffected from the religious traditions of their parents, and much of what he says is worth reading whether your a parent or a grown child.

He doesn't mention this explicitly, but perhaps part of the reason young people attach little importance to religion is that they see their lives as lying all ahead of them and see little need or relevance for religion. It seems like something for old people. Young adults are excited about the prospects of home, career, family, and so on. Like pioneers, they stand on the frontier of a vast and beautiful life stretching out before them filling them with a sense of meaning and purpose. It's not until they approach their middle years that some of them begin to wonder if they haven't been fooling themselves about what really is meaningful in life or whether there even can be genuine meaning apart from intimacy with God.

Not everyone asks this question, of course, and not everyone who asks it asks it in the same way or is even aware that that's the question that's been gnawing at them. But for some, maybe even for many, the question raised by the old Peggy Lee song becomes the crucial existential question of their lives: Is that all there is? Is life just a matter of acquiring things? Is happiness solely a matter of having the right house in the right neighborhood with the right spouse and going each day to the right job and watching each night the right television shows? When people start wondering if there's not supposed to be something more then they begin to realize that, as Augustine put it, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."

Neutralizing the Chinese Threat

Strategy Page brings us up to date on the latest developments in President Bush's missile defense program:

The latest test of the American missile defense system, which saw a defensive missile destroy an incoming ICBM warhead, is probably the biggest step yet in the quiet neutralization of the ballistic missile arsenals of China, North Korea, and Iran. In this test, a missile launched from a base in Alaska hit and destroyed a target coming from the Pacific Ocean.

One thing to keep in mind is that this test was intended for data collection, not to test if the system could actually kill an incoming missile. The successful takedown was a bonus. The next test, intended to determine how well the system can pick out real targets from decoys, is slated for December.

The system, as it now stands, will have 18 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) by the end of 2007, and is already sufficient to have neutralized China's force of 24 DF-5 ICBMs. How is this so, considering that China has 24 DF-5 ICBMs? Simple subtraction would seem to indicate that at least six ICBMs would get through to their targets in an attempted strike.

It is true, that if the GBIs work and kill their targets, six missiles would get through. But which six will they be? That is a question China would need a clairvoyant or a fortune teller to determine. With the increased level of uncertainty about the success of the attack, China would very well decide not to launch the attack in the first place.

We note that those who scoffed at, and fought against, Ronald Reagan's concept of missile defense have had little to say about the current program. It's true that Reagan's plan called for a space-based defense and the current program employs ground based missiles, but the emphasis on weapons in space was not what earned Reagan's proposal so much opprobrium. Reagan thought it was not only feasible but morally obligatory to defend ourselves against foreign ICBMs. His critics, however, thought, back in the days of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, that self-defense was "destabilizing" and likely to result in a pre-emptive attack by the Soviets before our defense shield was up and running. Nobody seems to worry much about that anymore in this post 9/11 world.

Rocket Ride

Our media, unfailingly skeptical about anything our administration, or that of our allies, has to say about the various struggles in the Middle East, have been astonishingly credulous of reports by Hezbollah that the Israelis deliberately targeted Red Cross ambulances for missile attacks.

The Jawa Report has some video that shows how absurd the reports were and how gullible the news outlets which reported these "atrocities" had to be. Watch the whole thing.

Thanks to Michelle for the tip.

Why We Can't Leave

Last week I posted an article titled Living in a Fantasy World in which I argued that the opponents of the president are reluctant to offer a genuine alternative to his Middle East policy, other than vague and meaningless adjurations to negotiate more effectively or set a time line for withdrawal from Iraq. Their reluctance to be more specific is due to the fact that what many of them really want him to do, although they don't want to explicitly say it, is pull out of Iraq as soon as such a pullout can be accomplished.

A withdrawal before Iraq is stable and self-sufficient, however, would be a disaster of historical proportions and anyone who has thought about it surely realizes this. Thus many of the president's critics keep their counsel about what he should do, and instead content themselves with bashing him for doing what he is doing.

Why would a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq be a calamity? Consider the likely aftermath of an American military pullout. Once we are gone the following are not just possible, they're highly likely:

1. Sunni and Shia would be quickly at each others' throats in a desperate civil war for political dominance. It would be a fight for survival because whoever wins would surely oppress, if not utterly eliminate, the loser.

2. Iran would move into Iraq on behalf of the Shia and to settle old scores with the Iraqi Sunnis dating back to the Iraq/Iran war in the 1980s. They would doubtless annex the oil fields in the south. Meanwhile pressure would mount on Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to come to the aid of their beleaguered brethren. Turkey would take advantage of the chaos to settle their chronic Kurdish problem by invading northern Iraq. Syria would be sorely tempted to grab some oil fields wherever they could. Iraq would get carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey among its neighbors and would be almost completely helpless to prevent it.

3. Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations would exploit Iraq's weakness to establish training areas and safe havens in the country from which to launch terrorist attacks around the world.

4. Anyone who collaborated or cooperated with the coalition would be marked for torture and death by the insurgent forces. This would come to perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis.

5. The chaos of war and the rape of the country's resources would result in severe shortages of food, water, medical care, sanitation, and electricity. Perhaps millions of Iraqis would starve or perish from disease if these conditions persisted more than a few months.

6. The United States would be thoroughly discredited and blamed for the misery and strife in Iraq because of our retreat. No nation would ever trust us again to honor a commitment. Pressure from their people would cause governments in Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar to insist we abandon our bases there. Other Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Indonesia, seeing that we are undependable partners in the war on terror, would ratchet back their cooperation. As the last American helicopter flies out of Baghdad, every Arab nation that has the money will begin looking for nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the blackmail and threats of the Iranians.

7. Our lack of credibility in the region would embolden Israel's neighbors to settle the "Zionist problem" once and for all. Once we start pulling out of the Middle East it would be psychologically almost impossible to reverse course and go back in, and the Arab enemies of Israel know this. Thus they would see our withdrawal as presenting them with a golden opportunity to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and Israel may have to resort to nuclear weapons to keep that from happening.

It may be, of course, that none of these things would occur. It may be that in the vacuum created by our absence the Shia and Sunni would turn their swords into plowshares and live amicably with each other.

It may be that other nations would not be at all tempted to grab what they can of Iraq's oil wealth.

It may be that al Qaeda feels safe enough in the hills of Pakistan that they wouldn't move in force into Iraq.

It may be that the insurgents would forgive and forget the collaboration of their fellow Iraqis with the coalition.

It may be that Israel's neighbors would feel sorry for Israel in their weakened and vulnerable state and offer to make peace instead of war.

It may be that tomorrow will be the day of the Second Coming, but all of our experience tells us that it probably won't be, and it is our experience which should inform our judgments and policies.

To withdraw from Iraq before Iraq can fend for itself would be the most immoral course of action we could follow as a nation. It would consign tens of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis to almost certain death and would earn us the contempt of history for such a reprehensible betrayal. This prospect doesn't seem to bother some, but it should confer a deep sense of obligation, it seems to me, upon anyone who strives to fulfill the Biblical mandates to do justice and love our neighbor.